Exams, Stress, 2nd year of university.

Guess who?

Hello hello hello readers I hope you're all very well. Life has been very stressful lately and I've kind of had a wake up call. Life isn't all peachy as I planned or wanted it to be. It's exam season and revision has taken over my life completely and right now I'm sick of it. I'm not going to set up potential student to shoot them in the foot, so my blogs wont be and have never been through rose tinted glasses.

This is second year, had I watched hunger games there probably would've been an appropriate reference right? But I digress. This is hard, it's so damn hard. It's hard to try and motivate when I'm so demotivated and exhausted. If I screw up now, my effort for my midterms would've been a waste. I want to, no I absolutely need to get a first. I've read the metro this week and most students are getting a 2:1. So if I want a job or a PhD after graduation I damn well better get a 1st. The second thing mentioned there was relevant work experience. According to my plans, I should've gotten into a hot shot pharmaceutical company by now. I've applied to 5 different GlaxoSmithKline industrial placements. Nestle required me to have a license- which I don't have. I phoned up Pfizer in August and the lady told me vacancies will be posted mid January. I took her word for it and mid January there were no applications open.

I've been stuck on this serine protease essay for far too long now, I just need to understand the concept of the proposed mechanism but I need someone to explain it to me, I'm an audio learner. Or so I think, if I hear something explained to me properly and it makes sense to me at that time, I will remember it for a very long time. But if I read a paragraph- especially to try and understand electron movement, it isn't happening.

I've successfully avoided learning about glycolysis and the citric acid cycle for a very long time, but now, I can't avoid it anymore. My molecular bioscience exam is all about bioenergetics, glycolysis, cancer biology, metabolism and topics relating to it. For this module there are 6 seen question, which to be fair is nice of them. However, they are not easy, not easy at all. Had these exact questions been unseen, there is no doubt I would fail.

It's not even about whether you're a hard worker, this stretches you to the next level. If you're not sleep deprived and exhausted, you're not doing 2nd year right. My exams are on the 27th and the 29th of January. So I have 8 days to finish proteins and God willing get a good 1st in it. With molecular bioscience, I'll be very happy with a good first but I absolutely need to get at least 65% in it.

It's weird to open up to strangers on the internet like this, however I want to stick to the principles that I had when I first started writing "This is my journey" and my journey consists of all of it. Everything, the tears, the hurt, the laughter and joy. The successes and failures, that make up my journey. All the things university students wont tell you when they're promoting their courses.

It's important to constantly remind yourself why you're doing this, you know why are you studying course X,Y or Z. Because that's what going to keep you going through times like this.

My name is Amina and this, is my journey!